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Lima, Peru – Maria Elena Carbajal still vividly recalls the doctor’s chilling response when, from her hospital bed, she asked repeatedly to see her newborn son, Francisco. “Once you have the procedure, you can see him,” the mother of four said the doctor told her, before asking: “You’re thinking of having more kids, like guinea pigs?”
It was September 18, 1996, at Maria Auxiliadora Hospital in the Peruvian capital, Lima – and Carbajal, then 26, had given birth around 4am. Within three hours, she had been sterilised.
Now a quarter of a century later, she is one of thousands of Peruvian women hoping to finally receive justice for one of the most notorious cases of mass forced sterilisations in history.